Download Giuseppe Verdi (1813 – 1901) – 100 Years on

From Ritmico Journal No 95 July2013
Giuseppe Verdi – 100 Year on
From Ritmico Journal 95 July 2013
Giuseppe Verdi (1813 – 1901) – 100
Years on
By Amber Read
Portrait of Giuseppe Verdi by Giovanni Boldini (1886),
National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Giuseppe Verdi was one of the few
composers who lived to enjoy fame within
his own lifetime. Not only was he the
composer of a host of operas still well
known today – ‘Aida’, ‘Il trovatore’,
‘Rigoletto’, ‘La traviata’, ‘Un ballo in
maschera’, ‘La forza del destino’, ‘Otello’ –
but he came to be considered a national
icon for the Italian independence and
unification movement known as the
Risorgimento.
In Verdi’s later years he was active as a
philanthropist, politician and gentleman farmer.
After the composition of Aida in 1871, which
marked 26 operas in 32 years, he lived out the
remaining 30 years of his life in semiretirement at his country estate of Sant’Agata,
composing only three major works. He
established funds and scholarships, built a
home for retired opera singers, and invested in
and and new farming techniques. Verdi also
grew old enough to be able to conduct his own
PR campaign. He gently obscured his origins
from overly-inquisitive journalists, styling
himself as a simple self-taught peasant.
In reality, Verdi’s parents owned a tavern in
the small village of Roncole, and had means
enough to buy their son an old spinet when he
began exhibiting musical talent – quite an
extravagant purchase in a rural community.
They later sent him to high school in the
nearby town of Busseto. With the patronage of
Antonio Barezzi, a prominent businessman in
Busseto, and a grant from the Monte di Pietà,
a local charity, Verdi was able to go on to
Milan to continue his studies. Although the
conservatory there rejected him on account of
his age (“Nineteen is too old,” they said), Verdi
was able to secure a private teacher. Once his
education was complete, he spent a few years
back in Busseto before returning to Milan to
launch his career as an opera composer.
After the success of his first opera Oberto
(1839), Verdi was contracted to write a second
opera for the Milan opera house, but the
progress of its composition was derailed with
the death of his young wife (they had also lost
two children in the years prior). These losses,
coupled with the not unsurprising failure of the
opera, resulted in Verdi sliding into depression.
However, the opera house director refused to
give up on him, eventually spurring him into
action with the libretto for Nabucco, which
snagged his interest and got him composing
again. The reception at its premiere set Verdi’s
feet firmly on the path towards success. In
particular, the wildly popular ‘Va pensiero’
chorus (‘Chorus of the Hebrew slaves’) took on
a life of its own outside the opera, becoming
closely identified with the national identity of
the Italian people and their struggle for
independence. At this time, Italy was divided
under the domination of various foreign
powers, and the image of the Hebrew slaves
struggling under the rule of the Babylonians
resonated powerfully.
In 1859, Verdi’s name was briefly taken up as
an acrostic slogan of Italian nationalistic
fervour: ‘Viva VERDI’ standing for ‘Viva Vittorio
Emanuele Re D’Italia’, or ‘Long Live Vittorio
Emanuele, King of Italy’, thus linking Verdi
forever with the Italian Risorgimento, which
was finally successful in 1861. Verdi
subsequently held political office, being
elected to the first Italian Parliament in 1861.
He did not, however, consider himself a
politician and did not seek re-election at the
end of his term, instead, returning to Busseto
and building up his estate, Sant’Agata,
From Ritmico Journal No 95 July2013
Giuseppe Verdi – 100 Year on
accompanied by his second wife, the soprano
Giuseppina Strepponi.
Verdi’s contribution to the development of
opera as a genre was immense. Throughout
the middle of the 19th century, composers
were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with
the fragmented nature of opera, with its
disjointed static windows of ‘aria time’ which
served more to showcase the singer than to
serve the drama. Richard Wagner, Verdi’s
German contemporary, rejected traditional
operatic ‘numbers’ for the through-composed
music drama, a genre of his own invention.
Verdi, however, experimented with new ways
to portray the dramatic through the traditional
operatic forms. La traviata (1853) is one such
example. Although still a ‘number’ opera, (in
which each act comprises a set of sequential
pieces, or numbers), La traviata embraces the
dramatic through the management of the vocal
idiom and the increasingly theatrical (rather
than purely musical) demands made on the
singers.
What was also striking about La traviata for its
time was its realism. The changes in Violetta’s
vocal style as she sickens during the course of
the opera is only part of this; another strong
factor is the opera’s contemporary setting
(most operas of the time had historical
settings).
Verdi was also sensitive to the theatrical needs
of opera as a dramatic form. No longer was it
sufficient, he felt, for a singer to merely sing
well, they also had to act, and look, the part.
Again La traviata serves as an example. Verdi
wanted a singer who looked young, fragile and
delicate for the role of Violetta, but it was
initially assigned to a singer who was sturdily
built to say the least. And indeed, the premiere
of La traviata was unsuccessful and it was only
in the second production a year later, with a
younger, slimmer singer in the lead, that the
opera was launched towards the popularity it
continues to enjoy today.
Not only does La traviata (and many other
Verdi operas) continue to be produced in
opera houses worldwide, it turns up in popular
culture as well. Its music is instantly
recognisable in the teen cult film sensation
Twilight (2008), and also in the 2012 film
Quartet, in which the plot centres around a
group of retired singers celebrating Verdi’s
birthday in a retirement home not unlike the
one Verdi built in Busseto. Verdi himself lived
out his own retirement secluded in his quiet
country estate of Sant’Agata reaping the
rewards of a busy and successful career and
composing only as and when he felt like it.
Amber Read freelances in Auckland as a
programme note writer and pre-concert
speaker, and teaches violin and piano in her
private studio. She is also Assistant Orchestra
Manager of the Auckland Philharmonia
Orchestra.
Poster for premiere of La traviata
Photo: Wikipedia Commons